Crimson
by CallMeElli
Summary: John watches Sherlock during a case. Lestrade is being annoying. John's POV, can be seen as pre-slash, though it's really more of a character study for me.


Some kill with brutality, clumsiness, drunken on anger or greed or liquor. They'll stare at their hands subsequently, incredulous at what they have done. They are unacquainted with death, they do not know the cold paleness and the stiffening of rigor mortis as it takes a hold of a body. These murders are often not very well premeditated, sometimes not planned at all.

The most deadly are the ones who kill for amusement. Precisely, serenely, it almost feels like observing at a sculpture, walking around at the murder scenes. They use their weapons of choice like a painter does a paintbrush, carving thin streaks of red at the throat with their blades, the green-blue-purple of bruises forming around the neck or wrists or forearms. They will do it for the buzz, the high of knowing they have complete power over a being. Yet they do not get swept away, they welcome death like an old associate and carry out his work with an odd magnificence.

The rapid thump of a pulse beneath your fingers, racing faster and faster, an idiotic last attempt at freedom, at _life_, but the pressure of your fingers keep that little thrumming trapped, beating frantically against your fingertips, and the pale skin of a man's neck is turning purple under your grip, a pretty sort of color that blossoms and grows, turning pale yellow and green at the edges. His arms are jerking, his eyes are blown wide and his mouth is gasping for air. The little pulse beneath your palms speeds up again, almost impossibly wild, and then it is dying, fading along with the light in the man's plain brown eyes, the pigment in his cheeks. Another artwork. All laid before you, you experience it in the eyes of the murderer, feeling every twitch of the body and flutter of the eyelashes, yet the figure is long deceased and the rose-like bruises are fading as you examine them with a fascinating concentration. The story behind the creation is no mystery to you as you read into every wound, every aspect, like a book.

I have been on enough scenes just like this to know how your mind works. You are a studier of death, an old acquaintance of the morbidity in blood and flesh and deadened eyes. The upturned collar of your coat just brushes the black curls that frame your face. Your eyes have refocused- you are no longer living the tiny details of the murder; instead those impossible eyes of yours are flicking over the form of the older man for other details. Your thin, pale hands hover lightly here, then there, picking up tiny snatches of who this man was.

It is a familiar image, a soothing one, if that is possible, with the sound of a lady- the man's spouse, as Lestrade told me previously- wailing in the background and the red-blue-red-blue flash of lights about us. Maybe it is only comforting because it means things are ordinary, that you will be as close to contented as you get for a day or two after this and I won't have to worry quite as much about you blowing up the flat. It means you're here with me, alive and breathing. I push away images of a rooftop- it wouldn't do to have a breakdown here, in front of the Yarders. It is best to save it for when I am back at the flat in my room alone.

I can't help but wonder at you, the incredible spirit who manages to perceive the word so differently. You claim you aren't a hero, you aren't an angel. Yet in the condensing London fog around us, with the steady glow of a streetlamp behind and the police lights blinking around you, I can almost envision a pair of wings extending from the shoulders of your jacket.

Shit. Lestrade caught me staring. It's good all your attention is on the body- the DI is sending me that little smile he gets when he's trying to insinuate something between us. There isn't anything, though, and protests lay heavy on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow them back because to talk now would trigger a landslide of insults from you.

You are done; it has barely been five minutes. The complaints spill from your lips as they always do (after you inform Lestrade of who to arrest, and, after some questioning, why to arrest them), bemoaning the lack of intelligent murderers lately and the fact that this was barely a four, much less a six. The thought of Moriarty slips into my mind- he was a worthy equal, was he not? - And I push it out just as swiftly. Not rapidly enough, obviously, as a small shudder runs down my back as his voice echoes in my brain. _I gave you my number. I thought you would call. _You notice and scowl, glancing around briefly to see if something in our environment has disturbed me. I suppose I am flattered. Not many, of course, are worthy of your concern for their well-being.

You ask if I would like to go to dinner.

Lestrade is giving me _that_ look again. I ignore it- after all, this isn't a date, its dinner after a case, like always- if you can really call it dinner when neither of us are really eating.

I suggest Angelo's. You agree.

And it's _not _a date. Obviously. Right?

_/

**_A/N:_**** I'm finding all sorts of things that I've forgotten that I wrote in the middle of the night who knows when. I improved the grammar on this one considerably- I'm sorry if the feel of the story changes a bit from beginning to end, it started out as an excerpt from another, completely original story I'm writing and turned into a slightly-implied-pre-slash-johnlock somehow. **

**Review away, I love you all!**

**Elli**


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